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 Alpharius wrote:
I thought I asked HSM1 to do the research not "Asterios".

Give a man a fish, etc, etc, etc...

How's HSM1 ever going to learn if everyone keeps doing everything for him!!!

we are talking about HSM1 here you do realize?

Merchandising has (generally speaking) ruined the turtles. Never again will they show Leonardo slash a guys face in half with a katana or Michelangelo smashing a skull with nunchuks.

I mean, Yeah I know it started out as an indie comic. But when people talk about the turtles, they think about the original cartoons and the LA movie not the comic. Those where created only to siphon money.
Infact, I would probably not even consider the comic part of the francise in all honesty at this point. Because for but a very few people the cartoon was where it was started.

Asterios wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Transformers really existed just to sell toys, The show did aswell. The show, just like TMNT, He-man, Thundercats where just marketing ploys. Like all cartoons ultimatly are.

TMNT did not start out like that at all!

Do some research HSM1!

TMNT started off as a small indie comic, then it hit movies and cartoons and merchandising.

A small indie comic from my home state! And only a few towns from my hometown! And from a college in that town that I did 2 classes at! And had an awesome 2001 New Years party at!

Don't forget that the PIZZA owes 96% of its popularity to the first TMNT film.

Speaking as a life long Transformers fan, the thing I've noticed in the fanbase is that transfans [transformer fan, not Kaitlin Jenner fan] HATE change. Ironically, hundred of G1 purists LOVE the Dinobots but HATE Beast wars. This is just an example; there are hundreds more.

I predict the film will have a heavy focus on army guys, toilet humour, annoying and needless teenage sidekicks, Bumblebee squeaking, explosions and billowing American flags against endless sunsets and lens flares.

 Compel wrote:
It's not so much "ruined my childhood" that irritates me and gets me so annoyed about these films.

It's the wasted potential. Transformers when I was young, really did properly mean something to me. - I remember a comment from someone on an animation interview show I watched a couple of weeks ago.

"In the 80's, you'd have kids fathers out there, working all the time. For those kids, Optimus Prime really was, in a lot of ways, a surrogate father to them."

I wouldn't go that far for me, but Optimus Prime certainly did mean a lot to me, and certainly him dying in the 1983 film (which I saw years later on tv and never saw the final episodes of the show when he came back to life. - So he simply was 'dead' as far as I knew, except for that one terrifying zombie episode I saw...) - Well, it was a really big deal for me.

Anyhow, that's a sidetrack. It just annoys me that these mass media, mass market films are wasting these opportunities. They've got a far wider reach than any transformers cartoon would ever have, there's so much potential there to influence people across the world that, "freedom is the right of all sentient beings." And other, ultimately cheesy but, to be honest, well meaning, good, things. - And there was tiny hints of it in the 2007 film with the various Spielberg touches. But they were never really carried on.

So yeah, I'm just disappointed about the whole thing.

I know what you mean. One of the comments that stuck in my mind about the first Avengers movie was that it was Transformers done right. It's a big-budget action movie with a fairly simple plot, and big giant action scenes where stuff blows up.

But--the humour is actual humour, rather than robot nutsack jokes and hilarious foreign stereotypes. There are supporting characters, but the focus is firmly on the actual Avengers, rather than the Mighty US Military and a random everyman who just kind of stumbles into the whole thing. The big battle is well-shot and the character designs distinct, so you can tell which character is doing what where, rather than just having blurry masses of robot bits hitting other blurry masses. They're both big dumb action movies, but the execution is light-years apart.

(And because I know the haters are going to jump on--you can sub out Avengers for any well-produced action movie. )

I'd never thought of it that way, but it's a fair point. Especially since there's a genuine feeling of, I kinda wanna say heart in the Avengers movie.

I always go back to this scene.




Ultimately, 'traditional' comic book superhero stories (EG not Watchmen or Walking Dead) are morality tales. As are, childrens tv programmes.

Sure, there's action, surprises, excitement, merchandising, all of that. But there should be this kernal, this try, this attempt that people walking out of the cinema or finishing that episode, are better people than before they walked in or before they watched it.

I have sometimes thought about this, as an adult, I am far less of an a-hole today, than I ever would have been if I hadn't, as a child, watched the Transformers, Spider-man or the X-Men.

Bay's version is just branding. That's all it is, cashing in on the name of Transformers. Strip off the Hasbro names and call them something else and you could have your own franchise. It doesn't bother me (as a TF fan) because I don't recognise the characters as what they're supposed to be. The characters are often so far from their namesakes all you can do is laugh and shrug. Ironhide wants to blow up some human parents? Lol, ok. Bumblebee is a mute ninja? Whatever.

Most telling is that Bay had perfect alternatives but eschewed using them to cash in on the names.

 Kojiro wrote:
Bay's version is just branding. That's all it is, cashing in on the name of Transformers. Strip off the Hasbro names and call them something else and you could have your own franchise. It doesn't bother me (as a TF fan) because I don't recognise the characters as what they're supposed to be. The characters are often so far from their namesakes all you can do is laugh and shrug. Ironhide wants to blow up some human parents? Lol, ok. Bumblebee is a mute ninja? Whatever.

Most telling is that Bay had perfect alternatives but eschewed using them to cash in on the names.

yeah they did a complete 180 on Bumblebee, from friendly VW bug who could do little to no damage to a major fighter and such.

Bay made so many changes I'm convinced some of it was specifically to annoy fans. Either he worked from preselected vehicles and refused to use accurate Autobots or he had preselected Autobots and refused to find appropriate vehicles. Either way it's the height of lazy. Like it would have been just too much to ask for Ironhide to be red?

whatever, he killed of Jazz, So no more transformer movies for me. It surprised me that i liked TMHT movie even with those luscious lips

 Elemental wrote:


I know what you mean. One of the comments that stuck in my mind about the first Avengers movie was that it was Transformers done right. It's a big-budget action movie with a fairly simple plot, and big giant action scenes where stuff blows up.

But--the humour is actual humour, rather than robot nutsack jokes and hilarious foreign stereotypes. There are supporting characters, but the focus is firmly on the actual Avengers, rather than the Mighty US Military and a random everyman who just kind of stumbles into the whole thing. The big battle is well-shot and the character designs distinct, so you can tell which character is doing what where, rather than just having blurry masses of robot bits hitting other blurry masses. They're both big dumb action movies, but the execution is light-years apart.

(And because I know the haters are going to jump on--you can sub out Avengers for any well-produced action movie. )

This is why is baffles me that there's not been a good Transformers film yet. Marvel have made an absolute killing in the last few years slotting different characters into what amounts to a formula for making a good comic book action movie, and I imagine literally any director but Bay would see that and realise it's exactly the kind of structure, style and tone than Transformers is just begging for! Keep the plot simple, the characters fun and the action scenes shiny and slick and there's so much potential, but somehow, for some reason they keep letting Bay's incompetence squander it.

Transformers really shouldn't be that hard to make a good film about! I've heard somewhere that this is Bay's last one, but short of a total reboot I can't see anyone else saving it. They really should just leave it for 3-4 years, and come back in the early 2020s with a Transformers film that's actually about Transformers, directed by someone who can actually direct and written by someone who actually understands the heritage and point of what they're writing...

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Transformers really existed just to sell toys, The show did aswell. The show, just like TMNT, He-man, Thundercats where just marketing ploys. Like all cartoons ultimatly are.

Not just cartoons mate, almost everything is made for money. People like getting paid because they have to eat.

But the trick is realising that just because something is a paying gig, that doesn't mean that everyone working in the role is a mercenary. Look at Disney's Marvel films, or 20th Century Fox's X-Men, or even Warner Brothers DC films. These films are certainly made for money, they aren't always great, and they sometimes change or do a disservice to certain characters in bringing them to the screen. But even with all that, it's clear in each case that people are trying to make good films out of the source material.

With the Transformers films that clearly isn't the case. Bay's indifference to the project has been pretty clear from the second movie onwards.

Yeah. 2 and 3 were pretty bad, but I can't fathom how even after jumping the shark in the 4th film that there are still people who chalk up not liking the film franchise to fans suck. I mean they do, but they're not always wrong. Seriously, it's like the 4th movie takes place in a world of perpetual sunsets. Its just creepy. The first one I enjoy and I think its better than people give it credit for, but everything sense has basically been Michael Bay showing off his technical chops and indulging himself with a massive budget. It's impressive sure, but the movies just aren't good.

I can't even fathom how this ones supposed to work. There's knights involved, and a dragon, and evil Optimis... I mean seriously were there not enough hanging plot threads from the last movie to run with that we couldn't just you know... run with them?

what I want to know is why we went from one whining human to another whining human? and when will we see head masters or target masters and such, they are making a come back in the toy line so we should see something like them in the movies right?

 LordofHats wrote:
I can't even fathom how this ones supposed to work. There's knights involved, and a dragon, and evil Optimis... I mean seriously were there not enough hanging plot threads from the last movie to run with that we couldn't just you know... run with them?

It's called intellectual bankruptcy. This film will be loaded to the gills with lazy tropes. He's a knight! There's a dragon! I'm almost wondering who will be the Merlin stand in or if we'll get a Mordredtron. I'm certain there'll be some tenuous connection to Arthurian legend though.

People need to stop going to see these things. Right now it's basically free money for the investors. Put in $200 million, get out $500 million (or more). I haven't paid money to see a TF film since the second one and this one isn't going to change my mind.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Asterios wrote:
what I want to know is why we went from one whining human to another whining human?

From here.

Someone made a supercut of all the footage of the Autobots and Decepticons actually battling each other in the first three of Michael Bay's Transformers films. It's a nice highlight reel, but the real story is this: These movies contain less than 5% of giant robot-on-robot action.

Don't believe me? Let's do the math. Here's the movies' run times:

• Transformers — 2 hr, 23 min.
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — 2 hr, 24 min.
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon — 2 hr, 34 min.

That adds up to 7 hours and 21 minutes, or 441 minutes. Now, divide the 19 minutes of Autobot/Decepticon fight footage by the trilogy's entire run time — 19/441 = 0.043 — meaning the footage above only accounts for 4.3% of the entirety Michael Bay's first Transformers trilogy.

7+ hours of footage, less than 20 minutes of Transformers fighting. I'm pretty sure that Sam's parents get more dedicated screen time than that. But everyone is there to watch robots fight. Just imagine if the film was mostly that and if they were clearly identifiable?

 Kojiro wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I can't even fathom how this ones supposed to work. There's knights involved, and a dragon, and evil Optimis... I mean seriously were there not enough hanging plot threads from the last movie to run with that we couldn't just you know... run with them?

It's called intellectual bankruptcy. This film will be loaded to the gills with lazy tropes. He's a knight! There's a dragon! I'm almost wondering who will be the Merlin stand in or if we'll get a Mordredtron. I'm certain there'll be some tenuous connection to Arthurian legend though.

People need to stop going to see these things. Right now it's basically free money for the investors. Put in $200 million, get out $500 million (or more). I haven't paid money to see a TF film since the second one and this one isn't going to change my mind.

actually there was a Transformers cartoon episode which had Transformers in Arthur's era.

 Kojiro wrote:
I can't even fathom how this one's supposed to work. There's knights involved, and a dragon, and evil Optimis... I mean seriously were there not enough hanging plot threads from the last movie to run with that we couldn't just you know... run with them?

Fairly certain the dragon you're referring to, is a Dinobot from Age of Extinction. Evil Optimus is actually Nemesis Prime who's been around for a good bit.

 LordofHats wrote:

It's called intellectual bankruptcy. This film will be loaded to the gills with lazy tropes. He's a knight! There's a dragon! I'm almost wondering who will be the Merlin stand in or if we'll get a Mordredtron. I'm certain there'll be some tenuous connection to Arthurian legend though.

People need to stop going to see these things. Right now it's basically free money for the investors. Put in $200 million, get out $500 million (or more). I haven't paid money to see a TF film since the second one and this one isn't going to change my mind.

Unfortunately for you, there are a lot of people who just love seeing giant robots fighting lol. Say what you will about Michael Bay, he's pretty damn good at getting people to spend money and making money.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Say what you will about Michael Bay, he's pretty damn good at getting people to spend money and making money.

Ain't that the truth.

To be fair, I've never really thought of Michael Bay as a bad guy. He seems pretty aware of himself, and what people think of him.




I might not like his crappy movies, but I can respect that

Asterios wrote:
actually there was a Transformers cartoon episode which had Transformers in Arthur's era.

Oh I'm aware, and it has all the absurdity of an 80s saturday morning cartoon to it, as well as being lazy writing.

Fairly certain the dragon you're referring to, is a Dinobot from Age of Extinction. Evil Optimus is actually Nemesis Prime who's been around for a good bit.

There's a full on flying (robot admittedly) dragon in the trailer. It's most certainly not 'Grimlock' from AoE. As to the Nemesis Prime theory, that's possible but doesn't seem to jive with the idea of him apologising for hurting Bumblebee. I wouldn't be surprised though if someone mentioned Nemesis Prime and Bay went for it but decided it's some dark alter ego of Prime or sleeper command he falls victim to. In short I think you might be right it's called Nemesis Prime but won't be a separate entity (probably).


It's really telling actually, that Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci were involved with the TF movies and they sucked but once they got control and made Transformers Prime- even with the same Optimus and vocally challenged Bumblebee, the show was awesome. Those guys know the lore and love it but something was preventing that coming through.

 Kojiro wrote:
Bay made so many changes I'm convinced some of it was specifically to annoy fans. Either he worked from preselected vehicles and refused to use accurate Autobots or he had preselected Autobots and refused to find appropriate vehicles. Either way it's the height of lazy. Like it would have been just too much to ask for Ironhide to be red?

Rights to certain vehicle lines weren't permitted (those owners wouldn't let him use the beetle, etc) - they were asked, and flatly turned down.
It wasn't done purely to annoy fans, but fans will take umbrage (Hey! PUT THAT UMBRAGE BACK! ) at anything.

OTOH, GM let him use their entire line of new stuff. Hence why Bumblebutt became a camaro (but in "deference" to the "fanboys" they threw in the sight gag of the beetle in TF1). When you are allowed to use GM stuff only, you pick for "close enough". With later movies, he got access to ferrari and maybach and Bugatti and Lamborghini but still, the old VW beetle was still no go. No great loss, really. People love them, but they tended to have their chassis fall apart from rust).
Hell, GM didn't even let him use their actual camaro prototype except as something to make copies of (it was a one-off).

I'm obviously in the minority here, but I liked all of the other Transformers movies, on a certain level. The story is lame, but to me the point is to see giant robots beating the crap out of each other. They're good action movies in which the story is secondary to the action and special effects. Sometimes, that's enough for me. Not always, but sometimes.

Red is apparently hard to film. Part of the reason Optimus has flames is to break up all the red to make things easier.
VW evidently did not want to associate it's cars with war (even fictional space robot wars).
Transformers has changed everything about everyone before. Notably, Ironhide was the new kid in one cartoon.
But mostly, Vanettes and Beetles just aren't cool.


But anyway:

(credit)

 chromedog wrote:
[
Rights to certain vehicle lines weren't permitted (those owners wouldn't let him use the beetle, etc) - they were asked, and flatly turned down.

That right there is a VW in the film. It's right there. There's no need to get rights to put a car in your film. If there was, filming an average New York street would be a legal nightmare. Then there's this:

This toy came out seven years after the first 'Volkswagon won't let us use their car' Transformers films. And these ones:

Came out the following year (2008). So it's clear that VW has no issue with Hasbro making VW toys, or even having one appear in the film. One wonders exactly what the nature of the rejection was such that they could release a VW Bumblebee a year after said rejection.

It wasn't done purely to annoy fans, but fans will take umbrage (Hey! PUT THAT UMBRAGE BACK! ) at anything.

But doesn't it make you wonder? Why couldn't Ironhide be red? And if he must be black, and he must have guns all over him why not use the actual black 4x4 Autobot with guns all over him? You've already go Peter Cullen working for you so why not have him reprise the very distinctive voice of Ironhide? If you want to have a yellow/green 4x4 emergency response vehicle why not use the yellow green 4x4 emergency response Autobot? Imagine this conversation:

BAY: I've decided to put the Autobot Twins in!
Kurtzman and Orci: That's great! Sunstreaker and Sideswipe are really cool characters.
B: Maybe, but I've decided to make the twins Skids and Mudflap. And illiterate, racist idiots.
KO: Skids... the.. the Autobot philosopher??
B: Yes. Yes that is what I'm doing.
KO: But.. we saw you have brought in a hot red Italian sportscar for this film That's perfect for Sideswipe!
B: Maybe.. but I've decided that shall be Mirage! And he's actually Italian!
KO: What? WHY? Why would you use that as Mirage!?
B: I'm planning to use that silver corvette as Sideswipe! IT'S A NINJA!
KO: So.. just one of the twins? Why not Sunstreaker, his cocky attitude and awesome ninja combat skills!?
B: Oh yes, excellent! Sideswipe shall be cocky and super skilled!
KO: NO! SUNSTREAKER! Sunstreaker is the cocky, exemplary warrior!
B: Oh but he's not in the film. Now about Devastator's balls!

To get things that wrong you have to be trying.

OTOH, GM let him use their entire line of new stuff.

I think 'let' is the wrong word. Paid handsomely for more likely. Don't get me wrong, some things need to be updated. The F-15 is an old bird now and I've no problem with Starscream updating to an F-22 or Megatron being a tank or other changes. Its the unnecessary ones that irk me, that disconnect me from the nostalgia Bay wants to play on and evoke. That disconnect is precisely why I'm not paying to see his film nor spending any money on the merchandise. I get that there'll be no shortage of people who do, but if Bay had given just a little more of a damn about the source material, perhaps I would have have. Like I said, what would it reall have cost them to make Ironhide red? Would toy sales have really suffered?

Doesn't make ME wonder. I've got no nostalgic feelings for the property.

I was 16/17 when that cartoon was on TV and had zero interest in the show. Still don't have any interest in the sales advert for robot car toys. I have watched the old cartoon movie and it made me long for my childhood (1968-1976) when I was deaf.

I don't mind the Baysplosion movies. They are mindless action movies, not ShakesMarlowespeare. Sometimes with hot girls, mostly with warporn. Sometimes with Chicago getting the crap blown out of it (what's he got against Chi-town anyway?)

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I'm obviously in the minority here, but I liked all of the other Transformers movies, on a certain level. The story is lame, but to me the point is to see giant robots beating the crap out of each other. They're good action movies in which the story is secondary to the action and special effects. Sometimes, that's enough for me. Not always, but sometimes.

I agree, seeing giant robots fighting would be awesome. So why am spending such a big chunk of the movie watching stoner jokes, a whiny and ungrateful human protagonist who just wants a girl to notice him, dogs humping, ethnic stereotypes, college as envisioned by a dirty old man, and starry-eyed tributes to how awesome the US military is?

 Rootbeard wrote:

VW evidently did not want to associate it's cars with war

Yeah... too late for that lol. WW2 made them a shed-load of cash.

 chromedog wrote:
Doesn't make ME wonder. I've got no nostalgic feelings for the property.

I was 16/17 when that cartoon was on TV and had zero interest in the show. Still don't have any interest in the sales advert for robot car toys.

Like you, I was a teen when the Transformers craze hit. My younger brother used to watch the cartoon and had some of the toys, so I'm familiar with some of the characters.

But I too don't quite understand the level of attachment grown adults have to a children's toy franchise. And I don't think it's the fault of the manufacturers of the toys, cartoons or movies if their work fails to match a level of depth and gravitas that some adult fans have (IMO) created in their own minds regarding the franchise.

I mean, Super Friends was the gak when I was a little one, but I never considered those cartoons to be anything other than kid stuff. And I certainly would never have made comments about cartoon Superman being a surrogate father. From where I sit, that's weird. Really, really weird. I must be missing something very important. *shrug*

The Bay movies after the first one (which I thought was the best thing he's ever done) haven't been good films, but then neither are most summer blockbuster action movies. And I don't think I'd be any more likely to watch a Transformers film that's a quiet character study of an alien transforming car. I can't take toy robot drama seriously, and I doubt that most people who aren't Transformers superfans would either. Hence we get big dumb CGI-laden robot battles, because the masses will pay to see that on some summer day when they just want to turn off their brain for a while.

The trouble is that the films have only been about Transformers in the broadest possible sense, all the films so far have made the mistake of having Generic Human Dude as the main character and some (occasionally pretty good) giant robot battles happening in the background... It'd be like going to see Civil War and finding out it's focused not on Captain America or Iron Man, but on the SHIELD agent who follows them round and somehow gets caught up in every major event without really having any reason to be.

The films should have Optimus, Megatron and the rest front and centre in the same way any comic book superhero film treats its heroes and villains. Yes, you need a regular joe as the audience character but they should be there in the supporting cast, ready to be expositioned at if needed and not dominating the entire film. If you were to take the first 3 films and cut out all the inconsequential stuff with the humans, you'd be left with some good stuff, but you'd only have about 70 minutes of footage, tops.

 Paradigm wrote:
The trouble is that the films have only been about Transformers in the broadest possible sense, all the films so far have made the mistake of having Generic Human Dude as the main character and some (occasionally pretty good) giant robot battles happening in the background... It'd be like going to see Civil War and finding out it's focused not on Captain America or Iron Man, but on the SHIELD agent who follows them round and somehow gets caught up in every major event without really having any reason to be.

The films should have Optimus, Megatron and the rest front and centre in the same way any comic book superhero film treats its heroes and villains. Yes, you need a regular joe as the audience character but they should be there in the supporting cast, ready to be expositioned at if needed and not dominating the entire film. If you were to take the first 3 films and cut out all the inconsequential stuff with the humans, you'd be left with some good stuff, but you'd only have about 70 minutes of footage, tops.

The difference between superheroes and Transformers is that the former mostly appear and behave as humans, while the latter are giant alien robot vehicles. The filmmakers clearly made a decision that general audiences may have trouble to relating alien robot car drama, and IMO that's probably a good call.

Blockbuster films aren't made for the superfans. They're made for the general audiences needed to result in blockbuster box office. I really don't think that the Bay films are bad because they aren't "Transformers" enough. If the robots were front and center, then their interactions and dialogue would be just as hamfisted as those of the humans in the other films.